The Stagecoach Inn is an exhibit building located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
The Stagecoach Inn is an exhibit building located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
Hezekiah Barnes built the Stagecoach Inn in Charlotte, Vermont, in 1783. A former captain in the United States Militia, Barnes had moved with his family to Charlotte in 1780 and established the inn and a trading post on opposite sides of the main stage route from Montreal to southern New England.
Built on a Georgian plan, the Stagecoach Inn, which town residents referred to as the Tavern Stand, possesses regularly spaced windows and two central, side-lit doors that are distinctive elements of the vernacular Federal style popular in the eighteenth century.
When the Shelburne Museum dismantled and reassembled the Stagecoach Inn on the grounds in 1949, it needed restoration. Museum contractors removed the dividing walls in the second-story ballroom, returning it to its former dimensions; they rebuilt ten fireplaces, two brick ovens, and two ham-smoking chambers; applied paneling and plaster finishes that approximated those found in New England in the late 18th century; and fashioned replacement window casings and chair rails with antique carpenter's planes. Finally, they reconstructed the broad porch that had originally wrapped around the building's exterior to re-create the inn's early appearance.
Shelburne Museum's collection of over 175 trade signs represents dozens of different trades using a variety of forms, such as oversized locksmith's keys, optometrist's eyeglasses and skate-maker's skates, as well as an enormous cobbler's boot, a haberdasher's hat, a clockmaker's watch, and an innkeeper's pineapple. Samuel Anderson Robb's firm produced several of the museum's finest figures, including a caricature of Robb in his National Guard uniform. Inspired by the popular Civil War-era song "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines", Thomas White, Robb's partner of many years, created the caricature as a tobacconist figure.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, trade signs advertised the variety of goods and services that craftspeople, merchants, and inn and tavern keepers offered. Many early craftspeople promoted their wares with oversized, three-dimensional metal or wooden representations of the objects they made or repaired. A gunsmith, for example, might hang a large gun outside his shop, while a dentist might exhibit a tooth. Inn and tavern keepers tended to favor flat, wooden signs that hung at a right angle to the building. These two-dimensional advertisements frequently combined a representational painting with the proprietor's name, and each side often displayed a different design.
Although a few craftsmen made their own signs, many turned to professional carvers and sign painters. During the nineteenth century most major cities supported dozens of woodcarvers and sign painters. In 1881, Samuel Robb of New York advertised his firm's services thus: "Manufacturing of show figures and lettered signs a specialty. Tobacconist signs in great variety, on hand and made to any design. Ship and steamboat carvings, eagles, scroll heads, block letters, shoe, dentist, and druggist signs, etc." [1]
Shelburne Museum's collection of 130 weathervanes includes finely crafted vanes as well as commercially produced examples. The tradition of surmounting buildings with weathervanes extends to antiquity when, as early as 100 BCE, a vane crowned the Athenian Tower of the Winds. Throughout the Medieval period, European churches displayed roosters, symbols of vigilance, from their bell towers. By the seventeenth century, English settlers had brought the tradition to America. In the United States, weathervanes first decorated public buildings but soon appeared across the countryside. Farmers would mount a representation of a cow, pig, or rooster on top of their barns to symbolize their trade, while horse breeders might cap their stables with a finely crafted racehorse.
Early weathervanes were often handmade, and the museum's wooden mermaid, carved by Warren Gould Roby of Wayland, Massachusetts, in about 1850, is a fine example of such hand-carved figures. Other handcrafted weathervanes include a Native American archer, a streamlined goose in flight, and a wooden rooster that originally stood on a barn in Bedford, Massachusetts.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, manufacturers began to sell commercially produced, copper weathervanes. Makers of these vanes would hammer copper sheeting into cast-iron molds copied from carved-wood patterns. Using a mold enabled manufacturers to reproduce each design many times. Shelburne's collection includes finished copper vanes, cast-iron molds, and a unique wooden pattern for a Lady Liberty weathervane. Many of the commercial weathervanes depict common barnyard animals, including roosters, horses, pigs, and cows. Others represent less familiar forms such as a centaur, a pouter pigeon, and an anvil. One of the largest known commercial weathervanes is a highly detailed fire-pumper pulled by a pair of horses, which originally topped a firehouse in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Whirligigs, which are closely related to weathervanes, most commonly represent a standing figure with paddled arms that flail in the wind. Some clever craftspeople built more complex whirligigs powered by a wind-catching wheel. One of Shelburne's finest represents a woman seated at a spinning wheel; doubling as a trade-sign, when the wind turned the spinning wheel, the woman's foot would move up and down on the treadle as if she were spinning yarn. [2]
A stagecoach is a type of four-wheeled coach used for passengers and goods. They were strongly sprung and drawn by four horses. Stagecoaches were widely used before the introduction of railway transport and made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers. Shelburne Museum has examples of stagecoaches in their coach and wagon collection. See Horseshoe Barn and Annex for more information on this collection.
Stagecoach inns served the traveling coach passengers. They stabled the teams of stagecoach horses, provided overnight loading, and served food and drink for weary travelers.
A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word vane comes from the Old English word fana, meaning "flag".
A whirligig is an object that spins or whirls, or has at least one part that spins or whirls. It can also be a pinwheel, spinning top, buzzer, comic weathervane, gee-haw, spinner, whirlygig, whirlijig, whirlyjig, whirlybird, or simply a whirly. They are most commonly powered by the wind but can be hand-, friction- or motor-powered. They can be used as kinetic garden ornaments, and can be designed to transmit sound and vibration into the ground to repel burrowing rodents.
The cigar store Indian or wooden Indian is an advertisement figure, in the likeness of a Native American, used to represent tobacconists. The figures are often three-dimensional wooden sculptures measuring from several feet tall up to life-sized. They are still occasionally used for their original advertising purpose, but are more often seen as decorations or advertising collectibles, with some pieces selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Shelburne Museum is a museum of art, design, and Americana located in Shelburne, Vermont, United States. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the museum grounds. It is located on 45 acres (18 ha) near Lake Champlain.
Electra Havemeyer Webb was a collector of American antiques and founder of the Shelburne Museum.
Deacon Shem Drowne was a colonial coppersmith and tinplate worker in Boston, Massachusetts, and was America's first documented weathervane maker. He is most famous for the grasshopper weathervane atop of Faneuil Hall, well known as a symbol of Boston.
Yancey's Tavern is a historic structure located in Sullivan County, Tennessee on Island Road, the first wagon road in the state (1761). The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Garfield Farm and Inn Museum is a Registered Historic Place in Kane County, Illinois, United States. The property is a 375-acre (1.52 km2) farmstead, centered on an inn that served teamsters and the nearby community during the 1840s. It is currently a museum offering a variety of educational and entertainment events. The buildings that remain are three original 1840s structures, including the 1842 hay and grain barn, the 1849 horse barn, and the 1846 inn. Various other barns and outbuildings also stand, the last dated to 1906.
The Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building is an exhibit building located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, in the U.S. state of Vermont. It was built as a memorial to the museum's founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, and her husband, James Watson Webb II. It is home to the museum's European Paintings Collection. The collection is shown in six period rooms relocated from Electra and J. Watson Webb's 1930s New York City apartment at 740 Park Avenue.
The Circus Building is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. It houses a collection of circus posters, Gustav A. Dentzel Carousel animals, and elaborately carved miniature circuses, including those by Roy Arnold and Edgar Kirk.
The Blacksmith Shop is an exhibit building and a live-demonstration site at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. The Blacksmith Shop, a one-room brick structure built about 1800, and its later frame addition, originally stood near the railroad tracks in the village of Shelburne.
The Dorset House is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, United States; it houses the museum's collection of 900 wildfowl decoys.
The Hat and Fragrance Textile Gallery is an exhibit space at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont which houses quilts, hatboxes, and various other textiles. The name "Hat and Fragrance" refers both to Electra Havemeyer Webb's collection of hatboxes and to the fragrant, herbal sachets used to preserve textiles. In 1954, Shelburne Museum was the first museum to exhibit quilts as works of art; prior to this exhibition quilts were only shown as accessories in historic houses.
The Horseshoe Barn and Horseshoe Barn Annex are two exhibit buildings located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Both buildings exhibit a variety of horse-drawn vehicles, including carriages, trade wagons, stagecoaches, and sleighs.
The Shaker Shed is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. It exhibits the museum's collection of hand-tools and household equipment.
The Toy Shop is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum, which is located in Shelburne, Vermont. Toy Shop houses 19th- and early 20th-century playthings, including miniature transportation toys, penny banks, and music boxes.
Variety Unit is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
The Galena–Chicago trail was a stagecoach route located in northern Illinois that ran from the mid-to-late 1830s until 1854. As indicated by its name, the route linked Chicago, located in the northeast of the state, with Galena which was located in the lead mining district of the northwest. The Chicago-Galena trail includes the "Stagecoach Trail" that runs between Galena and Lena, Illinois. East of Lena the stage route follows U.S. Route 20 and Business U.S. Route 20 through Eleroy, Freeport and Rockford to Belvidere. This road began as the old State Road number 2 established on 15 January 1836 and laid out by June 1837.
The Barre Firehouse Weathervane is a hammered cooper weathervane that used to sit atop the Firehouse in Barre, Vermont. Created in 1904, the weathervane depicts a “flying team” of horses pulling a hook and ladder wagon. It is currently displayed in the Vermont History Center also in downtown Barre.
Travis Tuck was a Martha's Vineyard based metal sculptor known for his hand-crafted weather vanes of repoussé copper and bronze. His works turn in the wind above Steven Spielberg's East Hampton estate and 110 feet over Penn State's Beaver Stadium.